Disqus - Latest Comments for knowtheory

Re: JRuby 9000

Ted Han — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 17:46:26 -0000

So many congratulations. You guys have been such an inspiration and so helpful for so long. Well done :)

Re: The Power of Data Journalism » Harvard Political Review

Ted Han — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 21:41:19 -0000

It's worth pointing out that predictive modeling is but one of the possible rhetorical uses of data. Prediction is what scientists focus on quite often (ultimately theories are tested on their predictive power based on whether they account for future data), but much of journalistic data analysis is retrospective.

Retrospective aggregation/analysis of data (which is not necessarily probabilistic in nature) can be used to talk conclusively about the state of the world in terms that are larger than the experiences of just a handful of individuals (and as a shield against accusations of cherry picking).

Re: http://blog.mattwaite.com/post/23175693442

Ted Han — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:01:58 -0000

I want a kinect i could mount to something mobile to map things.

Personally i also wish i had a secondary screen i could display stuff on... you know, just cause.

Re: knowtheory.net

Ted Han — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:39:44 -0000

checking what the threading looks like.

Re: knowtheory.net

Ted Han — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:38:56 -0000

This is an entirely ridiculous idea that i am testing out.

Re: DocumentCloud removes email dump after legal threat

Ted Han — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:33:19 -0000

Hey Folks, just to add some further clarity to the issue, DocumentCloud has also written a piece up on our blog:

http://blog.documentcloud.o...

Re: DocumentCloud for DropBox

Ted Han — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:25:34 -0000

This is a great idea Ben!

In fact, it's one that we've talked about implementing at DocumentCloud. We also think that this is a worthwhile project, and would be happy to collaborate to make it happen.

Re: Backbone Live Collections - Bocoup

Ted Han — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:38:22 -0000

Doh, posting prior to reading meghna's comment.

Re: Options

Ted Han — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:44:19 -0000

Seriously unsexy but the job you've just described is what debt collectors do. not so cool :\

Re: Scripting News: If I were...

Ted Han — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:12:22 -0000

I would actually do the opposite on the last point there Dave (the elite invite only point, not the lunch point ;) ).

If i were invited to Shorenstein and/or Davos, i would *absolutely* tweet about it. I would tweet about it as much as i could. I would want to tear down the veil, and show others both what happened there, and what i thought about it.

Sharing is caring. And if there's anything the 1% needs to prove right now, is that it cares about everyone else, and the inequality that we live with.

Re: Depression and Decline: American Irresponsibility is Ending the American Era with a Bang

Ted Han — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 08:37:39 -0000

It's not clear to me that even if the US defaults, that it couldn't recover. @felixsalmon did an interesting video about the credibility of AAA rated bonds (including sovereign debt) as reliable financial instruments you can watch here on the subject: http://blogs.reuters.com/fe...

The US played a substantial role in the '29 crash, and came out of it a world power, not to say that that is guaranteed to happen, but i'm not quite so pessimistic that default means the end of American hegemony, especially since China's economy itself is not any more credible than the US's.

Last, the real problem that the US has is one of political credibility. The GOP are the ones who've tied the political credibility to US fiscal credibility. They have moved from Voodoo Economics to Cthulonic Economics. If Republican legislators can cause a debt crisis any time they feel like it, that is what is going to cripple the US, not the default directly.

The default is just (heh, "just") going to plunge the world into another recession/depression.

I feel like i'm living in Dickensian England.

Re: The Widespread Occurrence of White Supremacist, Treasonous, and Pro-Slavery License Plates

Ted Han — Fri, 13 May 2011 14:38:56 -0000

Surely the Confederate Flag isn't the only symbol of meaning or import in the south. Why pick the confederate flag? Especially something that has *actually* been used as a symbol of racial hatred? (I'm not saying that all people use it in that way, but the rehabilitation of the Confederate flag as something other than a symbol for racism has a long steep hill to climb)

Re: http://blog.knowtheory.net/post/3381408276

Ted Han — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:09:30 -0000

Thanks Matt, i do have a minecraft account actually!

I've used it to build things like this:

http://cl.ly/2V1I0J2g0n0C2G...

i should probably post about it :)

Re: Fun with Ruby: Get All Nancy Drew on Chrome - Intridea Blog

Ted Han — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:35:46 -0000

Hey, it's cool to see other people catch on to doing this :D

I presented a couple stories about datamining with DataMapper at RubyKaigi this past august, you can check out the slides here: http://www.slideshare.net/k...

The files i used to mine my chrome history are also here: https://github.com/knowtheo...

One of the nice things about using DataMapper to do this sort of mining rather than ActiveRecord is that it's really easy to build classes that just automatically handle the modified Epoch time. Check the repo out :) https://github.com/knowtheo...

Re: Counterfeit Lugaru on Apple's App Store (developing) - Wolfire Games Blog

Ted Han — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 23:04:50 -0000

Hey Wolfire dudes,

You should point out to Apple that the version of Lugaru being distributed w/o your consent is GPL, and presumably falls afoul of the same problems that VLC did. That might get a more serious response (although you'd have to clarify the license under which you are distributing Lugaru HD to make sure that Apple is not obligated to act under GPL).

Re: Happy Hour Vid: Ann Coulter Demands a Heterosexual New York Times | The Atlantic Wire

Ted Han — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 18:17:35 -0000

Does that mean that we can demand a female version of Ann Coulter?

Re: Should NPR Have Fired Juan Williams for Muslim-Airplane Remarks? | The Atlantic Wire

Ted Han — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:33:56 -0000

This compilation of quotes is an incredibly effective demonstration of a common political smear tactic.

Those defending Juan Williams either do not address his behavior, preferring to accuse NPR of political correctness, or seek to exonerate Williams because (purportedly) everyone else secretly agrees with him.

Williams's behavior should stand on its own merits (or lack thereof). NPR's behavior, whether or not you agree with it, is not pertinent to whether Williams is being a bigot or not.

Re: http://blog.knowtheory.net/post/1074676060

Ted Han — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 06:04:23 -0000

Nice! Thanks dude!

Re: The Case for Calling Them Nitwits - Magazine - The Atlantic

Ted Han — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:43:51 -0000

Who cares how smart your enemy is? You don't need to be intelligent to be dangerous.

The author clearly doesn't understand the point of asymmetric warfare. Even if people want to laugh at the fact that 50% of Afghani suicide bombers don't kill people, 50% *DO* kill people. Suicide bombers aren't doing a cost benefit analysis of their efficacy and then deliberating on whether they're going to blow themselves up or not. Their job is to sow terror, and pierce the idea of safety.

In spite of any of the points mentioned in the article, it's still possible to recruit suicide bombers to go blow themselves up for an ideology that's insane.

------------------------------------

I do honestly believe that we should point out the absurdity of suicide bombing. But the absurdity is *not* a question of their efficacy, which is undeniably a winning strategy if you've got the man power to throw at it. The absurdity of suicide bombing lay in the ideology, and the goals one seeks to achieve by blowing oneself up.

Re: The Case for Calling Them Nitwits - Magazine - The Atlantic

Ted Han — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 10:05:58 -0000

1) Who cares how dumb they are?
2) You don't have to be smart, or even particularly effective to successfully wage asymmetric warfare.
3) They may be only at a 50% kill rate for others in Afghanistan, but you know what? They're still finding suicide bombers, and if they're not actually winning, they're certainly keeping NATO from accomplishing its goals.

This entire post astounds me with it's naïveté. Are we now just trying to make ourselves feel better through name calling?

Re: http://blog.knowtheory.net/post/544154898

Ted Han — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:47:58 -0000

Read more here: http://www.itworld.com/gove...

Re: Things I Love About Bundler

Ted Han — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:11:17 -0000

Dude, you're just wrong.

Bundler does dependency resolution. Chef so far as i am aware doesn't do the constraint matching and verification that Bundler does to ensure that the code you've got is coherent, *even if you're using 3rd party libraries*. So, when you bump your library versions you're not suddenly caught unawares by subtle bugs.

Chef is good for server deployment. Bundler is good for ensuring that all your dev environments are consistent (at least with regard to your Ruby code). Bundler may be useful in deployment, but Bundler isn't *about* deployment.

Re: Should Rodell Vereen Go To Jail? | The Atlantic Wire

Ted Han — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:22:08 -0000

This is not a good question.

We don't send people to jail for abusing animals for the animals sake. We send people to jail for animal abuse, because animal abuse is indicative of the exact same sort of abuse of power over the weak, that you see with child abuse, elder abuse, or a variety of other abuses of control and power over the defenseless.

Likewise, you send people who have sex with animals to jail, because they are having non-consentual sex.

At the risk of touching off a flame war, we don't kill or eat beef to gratify ourselves psychologically or physically in a way that is potentially harmful to (human) society.

Re: Tired of (rubyists) arguing? Do something about it.

Ted Han — Fri, 01 May 2009 03:10:38 -0000

I don't know that it is a bad thing. I think that dissent and variety of opinion is an important thing.

I would go further to say two things. First that open source communities are loose associations, and that's a strength. We can function in smart packs that can get together and get more stuff done if there is a pressing need. Or, we can function as individual units within a larger mesh.

The flipside that Headius mentions is the pitfall of turning that into cliques. There are still that tie us together, and we should acknowledge that. Our work and common platform binds us into one community, and decisions about our shared platform effect us all. We need to recognize that and make sure we keep that as open as possible. And that's for egalitarian/socialist reasons as well as libertarian/laissez faire reasons.

And to be clear, i'm not knocking the daily good deeds that the ruby community does as a matter of being a functioning OSS community. Instead, i would like to ask people, to ask themselves "is my preoccupation with the furor in the community constructive? Could my time be spent more constructively doing something else?"

I don't want people to abandon discussion of this subject if they feel they are contributing something meaningful and mapping the situation out in a useful way. But there are things we can, and should do to move us forward regardless of what one's opinion is of the current state of affairs.

Re: I’m a Geek, How Do I Pick a Business Partner I can Trust?

Ted Han — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:17:01 -0000

You do reference checks on your girlfriends?